Brooklyn's Finest
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Rating: 4.0/ 5.0
Overture Films
140 Minutes
As a rule, films that take their titles from hip-hop songs are usually flaccid, uninspired and quick cash-ins. Going into Brooklyn's Finest, that rule seemed unrelenting. Thankfully, rules were made to be broken. Antoine Fuqua's energetic and gritty film feels like a spiritual successor to New Jack City, which is no surprise considering screenwriter Michael C. Martin was originally hired to write that project. Fuqua, who made his name on the divisive Training Day, delivers his sharpest, most stylistically conservative film, which allows him to venture into new territory- controlling the actors. Rather than letting them chew the scenery, Fuqua coaxes performances from his stars that are smoldering and his steady hand creates a haunting and exciting tale of redemption, guilt and sacrifice.
The story is well-worn: three NYPD officers' lives converge and diverge over a fateful seven days. Tango (Don Cheadle) is a cop who's been undercover too long, while Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere) is an alcoholic NYPD beat cop with only one week left until retirement (surprise, surprise!) Rounding out the cast is Ethan Hawke as Sal, a stressed-out detective with a pregnant wife, more kids than he can handle and a penchant for robbing crime scenes. The characters and the screenplay are superlative, Martin resisting the temptation to have the threads neatly wind in. The three characters only cross paths literally once- Tango is crossing a street which Dugan is driving down, while Sal is approaching the building opposite the one Tango is headed toward.
Brooklyn's Finest's acting and screenplay excel- each character is written with earnest faults, wants and desires. Dugan just wants to retire, so when he gets assigned a new partner he's callous and weary. Tango, who was in deep cover, including a prison stint (shades of The Departed) just wants to be a desk-jockeying detective, and Sal wants to move his family into a new house, since their current one has wood rot, which is causing complications for his wife (a superb, if underused, Lili Taylor.)
Martin's screenplay is clever and dialogue-heavy, allowing the actors to feel out their characters through the nuances and patterns in their speech. His attention to detail also gives the classic redemption arc films like this carry a satisfying payoff. Dugan's conscience leads him to track down a missing girl he has spotted around his beat, but only after he contemplates suicide and has successfully retired. His retirement scene, rote and with no pomp whatsoever, mirrors his career: unexceptional.
Tango feels a loyalty to Caz (Wesley Snipes), a local drug kingpin he was imprisoned with, who saved his life. Caz, fleshed out with a delightful vitality by Wesley Snipes, is a modern day Nino Brown. He shows none of the remorse or conviction one would expect a parolee to- the streets are all he knows, and all he wants to know. He is unrepentant, but loyal, trusting in Tango more than his lieutenants he left behind. This weighs on Tango, and when Caz is compromised, Tango shirks everything he worked for to abide the code of the streets.
Similarly, Sal sees himself as balancing the books, considering that the money he steals from crime scenes as penance for his low pay. As one of the characters remarks, "As a cop, you're worth more to your family dead than alive." He deliberates with his partner about how there is not enough space in his current home for the new children. "I got to tell one of these kids that they got to move in with my sister. All right? How am I gonna do that? How am I gonna tell one of them that, no, you're the one that's got to go?"
Fuqua's directing has never been this focused, and the lack of overt intermingling is admirable. While there are some crossed paths and coincidences, they are organic. It takes an exceptionally steady hand to sell, and Fuqua's self-imposed restraint allows him just that. He chooses to wash the film in scummy primal colors. They offend the eye, they make it difficult to see clearly- and reflect the audience's perception of the characters cinematographer Patrick Murguia is putting on display. The film ends with a blood-red close-up of a battered Dugan- an image that's haunting, poetic and extremely late '80s/ early '90s. It hearkens to the lineage of films like New Jack City which dared to suggest that drug dealers and criminals could be people too, and that they could cross the lines they swore to uphold. With Brooklyn's Finest, Fuqua has created a film that points out how hypocritical the idea of the line between good and evil is. It's only there when the observer chooses to administer it, and always drawn at his own feet.
by Rafael Gaitan
